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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967162">First Dates and False Starts</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphicScholar/pseuds/SapphicScholar'>SapphicScholar</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supergirl (TV 2015)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, First Date</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 11:09:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,122</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967162</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphicScholar/pseuds/SapphicScholar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"“Did I, um, already ruin it?” Kara asked.</p><p>“I won’t lie, not showing up is a fairly terrible start.”</p><p>“I did show up! Just, you know, here…instead of the restaurant.”"</p><p>Written for the prompt: It’s Cat and Kara's first official date, and Kara is very very late, so late in fact that Cat believes she's being stood up (which may or may not be true, dealer's choice)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kara Danvers/Cat Grant</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>209</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>SuperCat Christmas in July 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>First Dates and False Starts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/caycep/gifts">caycep</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hope you enjoy! It was a delight getting to write your prompt!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>7:31</p><p>7:32</p><p>7:33</p><p>Cat watched the minutes tick by, feeling her shoulders grow more and more tense with every second that brought the time further and further past 7:30.</p><p>It wasn’t that Cat had never dealt with lateness. Hell, she’d spent the last two years in Washington where every self-important asshole waltzed into her office five minutes late, citing some absolutely urgent meeting that they simply couldn’t leave. But this was <em>Kara</em>. Kara, who showed up ten minutes early to events to make sure that everything was just so. Kara, who had worked with Cat long enough to know that on time was far too close to late to count. Kara, who had met Cat at the airport and brought her flowers and welcomed her back to National City with an invitation to dinner—a <em>date</em>, she’d been very specific on that point.</p><p>A date that was looking less and less like a date the longer Cat spent alone at their table.</p><p>Perhaps Kara had finally taken Cat’s words to heart. Two years and one overly earnest invitation late, but…</p><p>
  <em>“A drink,” Kara had blurted out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Cat glanced up at her, finding Kara lingering in the empty bullpen. “It’s a Friday. Don’t you have places to be? Friends to see? Avocado toast to photograph?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Kara’s lips quirked up into a smile. “Those are my Sunday morning plans.” Cat didn’t give her the satisfaction of a smile, biting her lip just slightly to keep it from showing. “I thought maybe you might want to get a drink.” Kara shrugged. “Carter’s with his dad this weekend. I’ve officially lasted at this job one week, six days, and seven hours longer than Snapper thought I would.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“And you have no friends to celebrate with? The old IT hobbit? Scully?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I could. But I’m asking you.” Seeing Cat’s glance dart to the bottle of bourbon she kept for long days and sweet-talking possible investors, Kara shook her head. “I’m asking if you want to go out.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Oh, Kiera,” Cat sighed. Kara tensed. “You’re young. You see a new job and a new office and all the new possibilities that seem to be opening up in front of you. And I’m something familiar, something safe.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Cat—”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Cutting in, Cat shook her head. “Let the dust settle. See what you want in a year, two years.” The “I doubt it will still be me” went unspoken, though it echoed all around them. “Ask me then if things haven’t changed.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The very next week, Cat called Olivia back and accepted her job offer. </em>
</p><p>7:45</p><p>The waiter was starting to give Cat that look—the one that was two parts pity and one part annoyance over losing a table’s tips.</p><p>Cat checked her phone again. No Supergirl sightings. No missed calls or texts or, hell, even a declined iCal invitation.</p><p>She waved the waiter over. “Martini. And the check.” He opened his mouth. “Don’t ask what I think you’re about to ask, and I’ll tip you 300%.”</p><p>He nodded and scurried away, returning a few minutes later with her drink, the check, and one of their small plates—nothing that looked like it was meant to be shared. It earned him a wry smile.</p><p>By the time 8 o’clock hit, Cat had managed to smother the hurt and humiliation in anger. She left a generous tip and tried not to scoff when the waiter muttered, “Whoever he is, he’s clearly too stupid to deserve your time.”</p><p>After confirming, one last time, on the ride home that there had been no crises requiring Supergirl’s intervention, Cat powered off her phone. She did not get stood up. And she most certainly did not spend her evenings checking her phone and pining after some millennial who’d realized Cat wasn’t what she wanted.</p><p>By the time she got home, she had resolved not to give it another moment of her attention. Clearly she hadn’t earned even the ten seconds it would have taken for Kara to send her a message cancelling.</p><p>But there was a small vase filled with flowers outside her door—not the roses that would have been all too predictable, but a blend of unpretentious wildflowers, white daffodils, and sunflowers that were clearly hand-selected by someone who had spent years learning Cat’s tastes beyond the expensive but ultimately generic bouquets that filled launch events and meeting rooms at CatCo.</p><p>For a moment, Cat softened.</p><p>Until she saw the note taped to her door that said nothing more than, “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Anger flared to the surface, white hot, and Cat had her phone out and on again in an instant, tapping her foot as it rang.</p><p>And rang.</p><p>And rang.</p><p>All the way through to voicemail.</p><p>“What is the meaning of this?” Cat snapped. There were a hundred more things she wanted to say. She hung up instead.</p><p>Shoving the door open, Cat crumpled up the utterly spineless “apology” note and threw it away. Though there may have been something cathartic about doing the same to the flowers, she could admit that it was a tasteful arrangement. It would survive her wrath. For now.</p><p>Cat strode back to her bedroom, kicking off her heels the moment she was through the door.</p><p>A long, hot shower. A shower and a drink and some of the decadent dark chocolate ice cream she kept hidden in the back of the freezer. And perhaps a scathing message. Or maybe she’d read Lois’s latest feature and send her a few edits…</p><p>By the time Cat finished showering, she felt marginally better. For a moment, she once more contemplated discarding the flowers as the last vestige of a truly terrible evening. She made it as far as the kitchen trashcan before relenting, settling them on a particularly sunny window ledge.</p><p>Wine…she needed wine. She most certainly needed wine if she were to make her way through Lois’s overwrought prose.</p><p>She’d just settled into the couch with her tablet and an email draft to Lois open when a soft tapping from the balcony pulled her concentration away from the first of what would surely become many bullet points.</p><p>And there was Kara (who else, really?), clad in a heels and a black dress that Cat most certainly had never seen before.</p><p>Cat turned back to her tablet, resolutely ignoring everything but the text now blurring before her eyes.</p><p>The tapping resumed.</p><p>With a loud sigh, Cat pushed herself up and strode over to the balcony door, pushing it open a few inches. “I can have security up here in under two minutes.”</p><p>“Wait! Please…please, wait.”</p><p>“You mean like I did earlier? Because I think you know that waiting isn’t one of my strong suits, and it’s certainly not something I do more than once in an evening.”</p><p>“I—I can explain.” Kara reached up, fiddling with the arm of her glasses.</p><p>“Well go on then. I have work to do.”</p><p>Kara opened her mouth, then closed it. She worried her lower lip between her teeth. “It’s—I wanted to be there. So badly.”</p><p>“And what? Car troubles? Oh wait…” Cat folded her arms across her chest, already regretting the short silk robe but hoping she could force an end to this pointless conversation soon enough.</p><p>“I just…I wanted this, have wanted this, for so long now, Cat.”</p><p>“Odd way of showing it.”</p><p>“I panicked, okay? I—I tried on literally every item in my closet. I went out and bought new clothes desperately hoping that I could somehow look like someone that deserves to be seen out with you.”</p><p>“Oh please. You now outrank me in public opinion polls as the most powerful woman in National City.”</p><p>“But I wasn’t going out with you as Supergirl!” Kara seemed to deflate a little then, shoulders slumping down in a way Cat hadn’t seen since Kara’s second week as Cat’s assistant—post-Chipotle incident, pre-redeeming save before the board meeting. “I was just Kara. Kara Danvers. And what’s some lowly reporter doing out with Cat Grant?”</p><p>“I had lunch with a reporter last week,” Cat bit out.</p><p>“Because she was interviewing you! I was trying to take you on a date.”</p><p>“And failing spectacularly.”</p><p>“But don’t you get it? Even if I’d shown up, I still would have failed.”</p><p>Cat could practically feel her blood boiling, and she pushed the door the rest of the way open, stepping forward until she had a finger jabbing into Kara’s chest. “That is a cowardly answer, and you know it.”</p><p>Kara stiffened at that.</p><p>“You what? Summoned up just enough bravery to ask, and then the second things started to get real, you ran. You didn’t even have the decency to call. This is exactly why I said no to you two years ago.”</p><p>“Do you not hear yourself?” Cat leveled Kara with a glare. “You barely even said yes this time.”</p><p>“You don’t get to pull that with me. You know as well as I do that I said yes. I showed up. Something you would know had you bothered to do the same.”</p><p>“No, your exact answer was: ‘Well, I suppose it has been two years.’ Like…like you were just caving because I followed your instructions.”</p><p>“Because I made the horrendous decision of assuming that meant you’d spent two years growing up!”</p><p>“I spent two years asking myself how badly I screwed up that just days after I asked you on a date you went running across the country!” It was practically a yell, and Kara’s chest was heaving with the effort of containing the emotions now bubbling to the surface.</p><p>Cat blinked. “I was div—”</p><p>“So help me Rao, if you say diving one more time…”</p><p>“Fine,” Cat huffed.</p><p>“Do you know what came out this morning?”</p><p>Cat arched an eyebrow. “Was it you? Finally tell your rag tag band of misfits that you’re not as straight as they want you to be?”</p><p>Kara only rolled her eyes. “Your interview.” She held out a wrinkled piece of newsprint, the ink smudged slightly in places, like it’d been clutched in Kara’s hands for hours. Kara cleared her throat and began to read. “When asked what the future might hold and whether National City will have its resident media mogul back for good, Grant doesn’t even have to pause to think. ‘It was the right time to go to Washington, and I’m letting myself stay open to new possibilities. Today it’s National City. Tomorrow it could be London, Moscow, São Paulo…anywhere.’” Kara blinked back tears. “You’re writing us off before we can even start.”</p><p>Cat could lie, could say it was a canned line, could promise the interview had happened before she’d ever agreed to a date. But nothing worth keeping started like that. “It’s true. I don’t know where I’ll be next year or even next week. But did you ever consider that you might be one of those new possibilities I’m leaving myself open to?”</p><p>“You have the whole world at your fingertips, Cat. What could I possibly have to offer you?”</p><p>“You’re brilliant and—” Cat shook her head. “You stood me up. This isn’t supposed to be about <em>me</em> comforting <em>you</em>.”</p><p>“I didn’t want to stand you up. I just…I was out buying this stupidly expensive dress to try to fit in at a restaurant that I picked because I thought it would impress you, and then I had to go back home for the flowers, and then I panicked thinking that you wouldn’t like the flowers because maybe the wildflowers were a stupid idea, and then it was 7:35, and I know that you hate to be kept waiting and figured you’d probably already left because of course I’d ruin the best thing that’s happened to me in years before it could even start, and—”</p><p>The rest of the words were muffled by a hard kiss.</p><p>Cat’s mouth was gone before Kara could even begin to kiss her back properly.</p><p>“I waited for you. I waited half an hour for you.”</p><p>“You only gave John Stamos three minutes before you left and told him never to call you again.”</p><p>“Because I was looking for an excuse to leave. I didn’t <em>want</em> to be out on a date with John. Maybe back in his <em>ER</em> days, but…”</p><p>Kara took a tentative step forward, one hand reaching out and hovering a few inches away from Cat’s arm. “You actually wanted to go out with me?”</p><p>Cat sniffed and tossed her hair over her shoulder.</p><p>“Then why… Why say no the first time? Why leave?”</p><p>“You had been my assistant for three years and were just barely learning what it meant to be something else. You were still acting like I didn’t know how you spent your exceptionally long lunch breaks. What kind of relationship could we have possibly had then?”</p><p>Kara swallowed heavily. “I…I could have understood that. But then you left me behind. For two whole years. Two years where it took a near-apocalypse to get you to even acknowledge me again.”</p><p>“Perhaps…” Cat toed at the thick carpeting as her gaze dropped. “Perhaps you were not the only one who needed time.”</p><p>“Did I, um, already ruin it?”</p><p>“I won’t lie, not showing up is a fairly terrible start.”</p><p>“I did show up! Just, you know, here…instead of the restaurant.”</p><p>“With a truly horrendous apology note.”</p><p>“I was hoping that I could do the real apologizing in person. I kind of assumed you’d be back a lot earlier.” Cat pursed her lips and glared. “It wasn’t my best plan, I know. But I did have a part two of the plan!”</p><p>“Does it involve groveling for a second chance?”</p><p>The barest hint of a smile flickered on Kara’s face as she ducked her head. “No, that’s still part one.”</p><p>“Then what does this part two entail?”</p><p>Kara took Cat by the hand and led her to the balcony, where Cat spotted a picnic basket and a cluster of candles. “Hold on,” Kara said, quickly lowering her glasses and lighting them. “I didn’t want them to start dripping wax everywhere while I waited,” she explained. “While I was panicking I, uh, I realized that maybe a fancy restaurant wasn’t the right choice. It seemed right on paper, but that doesn’t make it right for me. Or…or us. If there’s going to be an us.” Kara pulled out a chair and looked up at Cat with such hope in her eyes that Cat couldn’t say no. “It’s not to say that we can’t ever go anywhere like that, but that maybe we should get to start things without all that pressure.”</p><p>“You might have mentioned some of this over the phone before I sat alone at a table for two in one of National City’s most sought-after restaurants on a Saturday night.” The words lacked the same bite they’d held earlier in the evening, though.</p><p>“I really am sorry.”</p><p>“Don’t let me interrupt your little monologue. I assume you have more?”</p><p>Kara nodded, taking the seat beside Cat’s. “Did you know that it was on your balcony—the CatCo one, I mean—that I first felt like, like maybe you saw me? Parts of me that only one or two other people had ever tried to understand.” Cat hummed and let herself relax a little in the chair, trying to ignore the slight chill in the air. Kara seemed to notice, though, and quickly pulled a fleece blanket out of the basket, draping it over Cat’s bare legs. “It felt safe somehow, our little bubble. And even though it’s a little late, and maybe I screwed everything up already, I thought maybe this was the place we should be to get to know each other again. It’s been two years of”—Kara rolled her eyes—“‘diving,’ and I want to get to know you again, tell you about what I’ve been doing, too.”</p><p>“I never needed Michelin Star restaurants, Kara. I just wanted you.”</p><p>In a blur of movement, the picnic basket had been emptied, and there was a table covered in food in front of her. “Is it too late to offer you that?”</p><p>“I suppose I made you wait two years without an explanation. I can give you a night.”</p><p>Beaming, Kara took her seat beside Cat again and began walking her through the different courses. Cat didn’t miss the fact that nearly all of her favorite foods had found a spot in the extensive menu.</p><p>And over food, they talked. Tentative, at first, but growing more and more open as the evening wore on. Cat talked more about the months she spent abroad before moving to Washington. She talked about Carter and Olivia and the year she’d spent mentoring Nia before sending her back to CatCo. She talked about learning and growing and diving…and missing National City more than she ever imagined she would have—missing certain people in National City in particular. And, in turn, Kara talked about Snapper and endless revisions and rewrites and a short, somewhat ill-advised foray into independent online journalism. She talked about her sister and her friends and the parts of Supergirl’s story that hadn’t made it into the news: off-world trips and time-traveling friends and things she’d once longed for that didn’t feel right anymore and the piles and piles of letters she’d written and never sent, not knowing if Cat wanted to hear from her anymore. There were apologies and tears, but there was laughter, too—bright, joyous laughter that made it feel like maybe all the mistakes and missteps it took them to get to that moment were okay, so long as they’d finally gotten there in the end.</p><p>Over bowls of chocolate mousse that Cat insisted she couldn’t possibly eat (though it didn’t stop her from stealing spoonfuls of Kara’s), they dared to talk about the future.</p><p>Looking up at the stars, hands clasped together, slowly they shifted from “I” to “we,” to dreams and plans that might include this fragile, tentative “us” they were building.</p><p>“I know normally you wait until after a first date is over to ask,” Kara began, shifting her weight slightly to look over at Cat, “but what would you say to a second date?”</p><p>“That depends,” Cat murmured, “are you planning to show up?”</p><p>“Early and everything.”</p><p>Cat answered with a kiss that tasted of red wine and stolen tastes of chocolate mousse. “Is that a clear enough answer for you this time?”</p><p>Kara grinned. “Mmm, I don’t know. Maybe you should answer again—just to be certain.”</p><p>Cat’s loud laugh rang out into the night sky.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm on Twitter and Tumblr @sapphicscholar, and thanks to everyone involved in putting together this awesome event! Always nice to get the influx of supercat content :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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